Academic Essays

Part 1

Introduction

As I'm sure you've noticed through my comments and through our texts, we are dealing with writing academic essays for this class.

The Composition of Everyday Life covers a wide variety of concerns that you need to grapple with as you work on writing for this class, other college courses, and even in academic/professional positions.

Many of these concerns--audience, purpose, style, voice, invention, revision, editing--are transferable to other types of writing, from short stories, to personal reflection, letters, business reports, organization newsletters.

But our focus is practice on writing that will be most effective and make you more competent in an academic setting.

Therefore, based on what I've seen students do in previous WRIT 121/131 (and WRIT 122/132) classes, I want to point out and hopefully remind you of a couple things that will help you to write more effective essays.

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I. Organization: beginning, middle, end

• I bet that many of you have learned about the five-paragraph essay (5PE) in high school. I know I did.

• The five-paragraph goes like this:

• Paragraph One: Introduction

• Tell them what you're going to write about

• The last sentence should be your thesis,

• preferably underlined and
• preferably including the supporting points, in order

• Paragraph Two: First supporting point

• Paragraph Three: Second supporting point

• Paragraph Four: Third supporting point

• Paragraph Five: Conclusion

• Tell them what you just told them--

  • Restate your thesis
  • Summarize your supporting paragraphs

• Sound familiar? Some of us had the 5PE hammered into our heads, with the warning that this is how they write papers in college.

• And it is in some limited situations.

• And many students have gotten by only writing 5PEs.

• But only gotten by.

I would like you to grow beyond the strictures of such a formula.

• Why?

• Well, before I say why, let me explain the positive side to 5PEs.

• 5PEs give high school students a sense of structure in a paper.

• It is true that essays usually have some sense of a beginning, middle and end. This is true of novels and short stories as well.

• Lawrence Block, a novelist and long-time columnist for Writer's Digest said the following about beginning, middle and end:

• Every novel has a beginning, a middle, and an ending.

• I picked up this nugget of information when I first studied writing in college, and I've heard it restated no end of times since then. I pass it on to you because I've never been able to challenge the essential truth of the statement.

• I've been trying to think of one solitary instance over the past twenty years when it's helped me to know that a novel has a beginning, a middle and an ending. And I can't come up with a one. I learned at about the same time that in 1938 the state of Wyoming produced one-third of a pound of dry edible beans for every man, woman and child in the nation, and that fact too has lingered in my mind for all these many years, and it hasn't done me a whole hell of a lot of good either. But I pass it on, too, for whatever it's worth.

• So, besides Block's puzzlement, we should be able to agree that essays ought to begin, support and end.

• 5PEs give high school students a sense of development.

• Each paragraph clearly supports a reason that the main point is so.
• Good idea.

• So why should you avoid 5PEs?

• They limit your thinking.

• So many times I've seen students go through this process:

• OK, gotta come up with an essay about music. Let's see, music is important to me because it soothes me, pumps me up, and makes me cry.

• Hot damn, I'm done!

• Yawn.

• The key to effective writing is effective thinking.

• When exploring a topic, very often there are many possible assertions, definitions, qualifications, comparisons and such that you can root around in to find out what you think, and to find out what is most meaningful to you.

• Limiting yourself to three will almost always flatten your discussion to the trite and the dull.

• They limit your choices.

• Some papers need an introduction that covers two or three paragraphs. Some supporting points need additional paragraphs to qualify or more fully define what is being said.

• They limit your credibility.

• Very simply, 5PEs appear juvenile.

• Some college departments on the West Coast will flunk a student if he or she submits a 5PE because it is not at the level of complexity and sophistication expected from a college student.

• So if like me you've learned the 5PE in high school, and have got it down cold, it's time to move beyond it, moving into the complexity of thought and development that will help you more fully to express your point of view, and more fully to present yourself as a capable, intelligent writer.

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Go to part two--Thesis statements

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to call me or e-mail me. My phone number and office hours are right above the Table of Contents on the Syllabus and in my user profile in Angel--Communication>Course Roster. I do have voice mail for my phone if I'm not in. And I'm available on AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) during my office hours--user name, profdan1032. (If you want to meet at some other time, contact me and we can arrange such.) I will also be in Second Life on Angel Learning Island. Finally, you can contact me through Twitter (danholt) or Facebook.

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[Introduction] [Organization] [Thesis statements] [Paragraphing]

Created by Dan Holt 9/19/1997
Revised 14 Sep 2009 05:33 PM -0400

© by Dan Holt, 2009